I am a cashier in a large grocery store. My customers come in all sizes, all ages, all colors, from all walks of life, and at all levels of intelligence, patience, physical abilities, economics, compassion, and humanity. About 80% are regulars, and there are a great number of those regs I like. I can shrug off a lot of issues because hey, we all have the occasional bad day.

But every so often, I have someone come through my line that I would just like to feed something sharp to.

Example: I had an elderly customer, paying for a modest order the best she could… a lot of coin, a few bills, and the rest on her bank card. At that point, we really weren’t all that busy, so I wasn’t stressed out by having to count her change. It was mostly quarters. A couple in their 30s, maybe, got in line behind her when I started counting. They had two items. In about two heartbeats, they were getting pissy because I was counting the coin. I was not running an express lane…there were three of those open, plus the eight EZ scan registers. The woman, especially, was starting to get snide about it. I didn’t say one word to them…. I just started re-counting the coin. (Had to make sure I counted correctly, didn’t I?) They moved to another register with a nasty comment I ignored, and my customer didn’t hear. The older woman behind them didn’t move; she just put her stuff up on the belt and waited, saying she wasn’t in a hurry.

Do everyone a favor: if you are in a hurry (or just an impatient sod), go to an express register, or a self-check-out, or a line with NO customers in front of you. I am not going to rush an elderly customer because you are glaring, swearing, rolling your eyes, making nasty comments, etc..etc… You aren’t making me look incompetent, you are making yourself look like a total ass.